[minwcnt5]

This also lets all of his co-investors in X, who were likely pissed that their shares tanked, exchange their shares at an inflated value (but one that still sees them losing 25% of their original investment) for shares in a trendy yet likely overvalued AI company that they consider to have more upside.

The other part of this is that if TSLA stock drops to $100-ish he'll be at risk of being margin called on the loans he took against his holdings to buy X. I wouldn't be surprised if this deal involves some X shares being sold for cash (that was raised from VCs) to pay down those loans, and/or the lenders agreeing to take xAI stock in lieu of cash.

This whole thing seems like a big pyramid scheme. I don't think this is the last time we've seen this type of move: he'll keep starting companies that are at the forefront of whatever the current hype cycle is, then leverage the extremely inflated valuations to benefit himself.

[jeff_carr]

> This whole thing seems like a big pyramid scheme.

That's because his scam of charging $8k over the price of a Tesla for "self driving" was complete vaporware. It never worked and it never was going to work. I am disappointed I fell for it.

There should be a class action lawsuit against TESLA for everyone that purchased the $8k self driving "feature". We were all told it was "being rolled out". It was a total lie.

[geertj]

You must not have tried FSD 13.x with AI4 hardware. I commute to work every day from the suburbs to the city with a ~25 min one-way commute with zero disengagements.

Edit: Elon mentioned in the last earnings call that if you are on AI3 hardware and bought FSD that they will have to upgrade you free of charge to AI4.

Edit 2: To clarify, FSD 13.x is only available with AI4 hardware.

[lukevp]

They started selling FSD back in like 2017 and it was supposed to be self-driving ALL THE TIME by 2019. It’s 8 years later now and the best you’ve got is “upgrade the hardware to version 4 and you can make a 25 mile commute without disengagement” when Tesla was promising cross-continent summoning so you could fly somewhere and your car would drive there to meet you, charging along the way. That’s L5 autonomy. The delta between promised and delivered is so far apart it’s ridiculous. Mercedes’ autonomous system is the only L3 even, Tesla’s is L2. They by my definition did not deliver whatsoever on their promises.

Another thing is a lot of people don’t even keep cars longer than 8 years (and people who are buying new, $100k electric cars are more likely going to upgrade sooner than someone who’s buying a $30k civic.) they paid for FSD thinking it would be ready soon.

[baggachipz]

I was intent on keeping my low-vin release day Model 3 until they made good on their FSD promise, come hell or high water. Then The Salute and The Infomercial happened, and I gave up and ditched the car like a psycho girlfriend. They got my money and I was fooled by a con. I'll never let that happen again.

[onemoresoop]

You sold it though or did you literally ditch it?

[baggachipz]

Sold it to Carvana. Picked up a newer used Audi for the same price.

[rage4774]

You ask for a friend, to „just look at it“?

[geertj]

I was replying to the "never was going to work" part

> It never worked and it never was going to work.

That is evidently false. If I had a longer commute it would work fine too. I have done ~2 hour road trips with it already.

You are bringing up a different point, which is that FSD arrived later than promised or at least implied (I don't know exactly how this was sold in 2017). That is self-evident at this point.

[itsoktocry]

It hasn't arrived at all.

[iamtheworstdev]

> Edit: Elon mentioned in the last earnings call that if you are on AI3 hardware and bought FSD that they will have to upgrade you free of charge to AI4.

Unfortunately, that's because they were sued in court and lost when they tried to force people to buy the upgraded hardware in the past. Not because they stand behind their products.

[consteval]

I would not be comfortable using any self-driving system on US roads that only utilizes computer vision.

The reality is we don't actually know how reliable these systems are, and Tesla has a long history of spreading misinformation about their own technology and obfuscating the facts. We don't even know how many cars crash while in FSD mode. We don't know how they crash, or why. None of this data is made publicly available, and of the data that is shared it is carefully curated, and we have no guarantee the data is not fudged. For example, are we certain that FSD does not disengage itself in dangerous circumstances to skew statistics in it's favor?

Trusting Tesla marketing on the topic of Tesla products is like trusting any kind of marketing. They have an incentive to sell the car, so they will lie, and they will cheat.

[threetonesun]

I am equally uncomfortable that other people are out there beta testing FSD.

[geertj]

> I am equally uncomfortable that other people are out there beta testing FSD.

That is probably because you are unaware how far it has gotten. Irrespective of that, a driver still needs to be there and pay attention. As soon as you take your eyes of the road for a few seconds it will warn you very prominently.

I'm going on the record here to say that FSD will be a better driver than 99% of humans in the next 2 years. I may be wrong, but I don't think I will be.

[chabes]

In this economy?

[nemothekid]

>Edit: Elon mentioned in the last earnings call that if you are on AI3 hardware and bought FSD that they will have to upgrade you free of charge to AI4.

AFAIK a retrofit from AI3 to AI4 isn't possible.

[intuitionist]

The outside investors in X made a profit on paper; Twitter was bought for $44B but the deal was financed with like $31B in equity and $13B in debt. It’s not a big profit (in fact it’s worse than you would have done in T-bills), and of course they’re swapping one illiquid and hard-to-value asset for another, but Elon isn’t giving them a 25% haircut at all.

[echelon]

Even if he made the Twitter investors whole, I wonder how the investors in xAI feel.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

They feel great, because he just magically turned a ~50% loss in Twitter into a ~50% return in xAI and a ~0% loss in Twitter.

Of course, you can't buy $20B worth of mangoes for $40B worth of Mango Holding Company stock and then suddenly make your mango-holding business worth twice as much money.

But you can pretend!

Private valuations, especially VC-funded companies, have been nonsense for decades. Elon is just exploiting that egregiously.

[chrisco255]

They're mostly the same investors.

[johannes1234321]

They just wait for the next round of this. Maybe SpaceX will require more AI? Or Tesla?

[zahlman]

Isn't Twitter's stock price higher than it was at acquisition?

[kelnos]

As the sibling pointed out, private companies don't have stock prices. But I've read estimates that Twitter is worth less $10B now, so less than a quarter what Musk paid for it.

[DoesntMatter22]

The banks just recently did a debt sale of a lot of that debt close to list price, so 44 billion dollar valuation is probably reasonable. Apparently the company is profitable now, sans the debt, so as long as it doesn't go out of business and can grow on other fronts then it's probably not a problem.

[SideQuark]

Can you list this sale you claim valued X at 44B?

Fidelty, which still owns a decent chunk of X, and is required by law to do due diligence on the value of that holding, and also has deeper insight into the value of X since they are also required to see X financials (since they own a big chunk of the private value), puts X value at 20% of the original 44B.

So please demonstrate your claims.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2024/09/30/elon-musk...

[ralfd]

A few weeks ago in February:

https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/musks-x-sec...

> Banks have completed the sale of $5.5 billion in debt for Elon Musk's X, according a Wednesday report by the Wall Street Journal. The debt offering was increased following a strong response from investors. Ultimately, the loans were sold at 97 cents on the dollar.

This is not the same, as no ownership was traded, but it signaled surprising confidence that the debt could be sold with only a small discount.

[rwmj]

> profitable now, sans the debt

So, not profitable.

[j_maffe]

What، acompany needs to cover the costs of how it was acquired, now? If it's valued at the price it was purchased and making a positive revenue stream then it is profitable.

[largbae]

This is part of the reason that the term EBITDA exists.

[DoesntMatter22]

With the debt it's break even.

[rurp]

This makes no sense. The debt payments are larger than the company's entire revenue! The Twitter purchase was a financial boondoggle that Elon is attempting to hide with this latest deal.

If I borrow $4 million to buy a house worth $1 million I could technically say that sans the debt I'm a millionaire, but that's hardly a useful or positive claim.

[FormerBandmate]

Rhis raises it back to the original level (although entirely based off the absurdly overinflated value of Grok at $80 billion. VCs…)

[ceejayoz]

Twitter doesn't have a stock price. It got taken private in the acquisition.

[azemetre]

Also I think Fidelity open puts out statements on the value of Twitter since they are a shareholder. The only recent info I can find on this was an article from last October:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2024/09/30/elon-musk...

Where it states that Twitter is now worth 1/5 of its $44billion price. I highly doubt it re-made up the equivalent value in the span of 6 months. If anything they likely lost more money as advertising sales have plummeted.

[bravetraveler]

Feeling mighty 2008/subprime in here

[onlyrealcuzzo]

He's simply moving Twitter losses to xAI investors - because he's the largest Twitter loser - and would prefer those losses go to other patsies instead.

[cellwebb]

I don't think he's going to be able to spin up hype on anything after this. He's burned a lot of bridges.

[sitkack]

When you Godwin your own thread, you are by definition done.

[silisili]

He didn't leverage Tesla stock to buy X.

These Reddit level takes with zero research are making threads like this really annoying to read. All emotions, zero facts.

[acdha]

Speaking of threads with zero facts, can you cite your research? Here’s mine showing $12.5B secured by TSLA shares:

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001418091/000110465...

That wasn’t the only funding, of course, but it’s a big chunk:

https://web.archive.org/web/20220422035052/https://www.bloom...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/25/technology/musk-twitter-s...

[silisili]

Again, you're just citing three things from the same date, and I don't believe it's in good faith.

Elsewhere I suggested people to just Google it, because it gives you an honest answer. So does chatGPT. So does the Wiki page on the deal, with sources.

Here is one said source -

https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/25/23141940/elon-musk-tesla-...

[acdha]

Thanks for the source. Google might have given you the later update because you’d already searched for it, but that was not true for me.

[HWR_14]

How did he get the tens of billions in cash he personally put in if not leveraging Tesla. Yes he had minority investors and put some debt on the acquisition itself, but he put up a lot of money.

[silisili]

He sold Tesla shares.

This is all public, I don't understand the weird speculation...

[HWR_14]

He also sold a ton of shares. But not enough to cover all the money he needed to put into Twitter.

[gscott]

He had to sell some Tesla shares because he reached the max borrowing limit against his Tesla shares that was allowed. Once he was forced to sell shares he had to pay a lot in taxes. This shows the mega wealthy can pay taxes and not become poor. We should learn from this lesson and tax the .01% of society.

[Difwif]

He hit his max borrowing limit? Can we just discuss the facts rather than making stuff up to talk about our favorite narratives?

[azemetre]

Yeah, let's continue talking about how no one person in the entire human race should have more than $50 million dollars.

I agree with the other poster.

[gscott]

Lets see how Google ai in search handles it.

AI Overview

Elon Musk is limited to borrowing against pledged Tesla shares, with the total loan amount capped at the lesser of $3.5 billion or 25% of the value of the pledged shares. Musk's current holdings of about 411 million shares and 238.4 million pledged shares as of April 6, 2023.

Here's a breakdown:

25% Loan-to-Value Limit: Tesla's policy caps the loan amount Musk can take out based on a percentage of the value of his pledged Tesla shares.

$3.5 Billion Dollar Cap: Musk's borrowing is also limited to a total of $3.5 billion.

Pledged Shares: Musk currently has 238.4 million shares pledged as collateral for his loans.

Overall:

Musk is borrowing against a portion of his Tesla stock holding, subject to the limits set by the company policy.

For more info:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-04-06/tesla-alt...

[IrishTechie]

You haven’t added any facts either, it’s just one more statement from a random Interneter like those Reddit posts. I’m intrigued to hear some fact on this point though?